Background
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Google goes to Apple: How a button on your phone changes the world
Dominik Bärlocher
Zurich, on 13.10.2021
Google changes.Apps on iPhones and iPads are newly built with Apple components.Little changes for users, but Google has achieved great success, even if it helps the competition.
Google apps on iPhones and iPads should work more than Apple apps.
That alone does not sound like the big sensation, but means a lot.Because behind the decision to make the Google Apps Apple-Eier is a lot of work, politics, resentment and competitive thinking.
The conversion of Google's own development to Apple components may play the competition into the hands, but was bitter and is worth it for Google.
App architecture: What is going on behind the scenes
Each app has a framework.When building a house, the framework would be the scaffolding on which the user interface you see and use is built.Frameworks exist for backends and frontends.Only frontends are important in this article - so user interfaces and everything the customer sees.For the sake of simplicity, I simply call them “framework” below.
The framework, its choice and its peculiarities, is a decision that is made by managers, not just from programmers.
Apps on your smartphone are created in a so -called Framework app.
Google uses the Ui framework Flutter.
Apple uses the ui framework uikit.
These two frameworks are integrated in software development kits (SDK).Google says Android Studio, at Apple Xcode.Both SDKs were invented by the respective manufacturers and are always developed further.In the case of house construction, that would be the toolbox in which all tools for house construction are.
You can do Android apps with Apple's SDK.Because Uikit and Xcode work with the programming language Swift, which can also be used for Android apps.Android works with Java, but supports pretty much every common programming language on the market.
In short: So it is possible to make iOS apps with Android programming skills.And the other way around.Only that this makes it useful in very few cases.The reason for this is less technological, but more political.
Politics behind programming
The SDKs are free and freely accessible.The programming languages are open source and also freely accessible.This promises the big age of the apps.A program, compatible with everything.Technologically, the paths would be paved that everyone could always develop and use native apps with all of them.
Only that neither Google nor Apple are particularly interested in the fact that this happens like this.
Sure, both corporations speak of openness and work with terms such as "intuitive" around themselves.But that only applies to the case that an Android programmer programs with the Android studio for Android.Everything else is like a workaround.A look at Flutter for iOS Developer shows how that works.Terms differ, things work differently and in general programmers have to learn the programming language completely new.
This is no longer "intuitive" or "simply accessible".It is extremely complicated to get this bridging in practice even to a reasonable way.It seems easier when a programmer simply installs two SDKs and the app writes practically twice.But that takes time and resources that only have larger programming studios.In reality, all app programming studios, small or large, are faced with a choice:
You opt for a platform (iOS or Android) and vanish to manage the other platform one day.
The studio uses a hybrid framework to help.It is not absolutely necessary to use a native framework.Ionic is such a hybrid framework.Flutter can also hybrid, but you can't get around at Xcode.
The studio builds the app twice.That can even be cheaper than with a hybrid aphestrian.
Management and operational efficiency meet here.The developers build something that is open source, but its actual implementation in real life outside of a fixed framework is absurdly complicated.Could that be made easy?Yes.Is it made easier?no.Reason: The components for your own platforms must be further developed.This needs resources, time and work.Resources that should not be spent on the competition.
A somewhat less abstract example: if Apple optimized the export swift for Android, then the group from Cupertino would do work for its big opponent Google.Apple would waste Apple resources for the development of Google's development.Because Apple itself would have nothing of it.The programming world maybe, but Apple doesn't really want to work for the competition and is really good at creating and holding sealed out areas.
Google Maps on iOS: A handicrafts, historically speaking
With the rise of the iPhones and the simultaneous Android triumphal march, not only a competitive situation was created, but also a need.The need for YouTube on the iPhone, Google Maps and maybe Google Photos.
Google had very little desire because they would take Apple users a reason to switch to Android.But the public pressure was too big.So Google apps have gradually found their way to Apple's platforms.The other way around.Apple offers a handful of apps on the Google Play Store, but does not make any institutions to port the iCloud to Android.
Why?If you want the iCloud, you should use an iPhone.
If you want to use Google Drive, you can use pretty much any smartphone.
Both are political decisions from the respective manufacturers.And there is only one thing to say about both of them: Fair Enough.Companies are not obliged to openness.It may be a little sportier to be open, but nobody can force Apple to sportiness.Just like Google is not obliged to be represented on Apple platforms.From a legal point of view, the obvious monopoly must only be avoided in software development.As long as no one can prove a monopoly, everything is okay.
Google decided in 2012 to be the first app on iOS Google Maps.In the development of the Google app for Apple's ecosystem, the team around Development Leader Jeff Koeyen noticed that Apple is missing some mandatory elements for Google Apps.Therefore, the team recreated these elements - as a foreign body, in the technical language Material components.You are of course open sources.This is how Google and Apple avoid the accusation of the monopoly.
Say: The first version of Google Maps on Apple's iOS was a handicraft.The app has mixed Apple's own libraries, design elements and functions with Google delivered by Google.
It was like this.For nine years.
Material Components: Maintenance Mode since July
In July 2021, however, that changes.The material components for iOS - the foreign bodies - are transferred by Google in the maintenance fashion.This means that they will not be further developed until further notice, but only well maintained.If something is broken, it will be repaired.Security leaks are stuffed.But otherwise the material components may die in dignity.
This makes Google a big step, politically speaking.Because instead of loading their own components, Jeff Koeyen and his team will completely focus on the Apple own components in the future.This confirms Koeyen in a Twitter thread.
Coeyen describes the situation that is inevitable in the non-communic development of software.The material components are further developed and go in one direction.The core components of Apple continue to develop and go in a different direction.The bridge that the material has to beat Components is getting bigger and bigger.
At the beginning of 2021, the team around Jeff Koeyen wonders: does the bridge strike still have to be?
The view of what Apple's SDK and its components can do shows: Apple can now do that too.It was time to ask a few uncomfortable questions: a simple switch in an app really has to request your own component of an external library?
The answer was clear: no.Many of the material components are no longer needed because Apple's core components now deliver them.The few components that have to be added in addition are given more attention thanks to the maintenance fashion of all other components.This promises faster and more efficient development of Google Apps under iOS.
It is quite possible that as a user you will not notice this change.This although simple elements in the Google Apps are newly made instead of the material component “App Bar” with the Apple “Uinavigation controller”.
Of course, these Apple Components in Google's apps will not look as if they had created Apple.Google's own brand identity will flow in.
Conclusion: Money (and a bit of development) is about politics
The decision to work with Apple's components is a double -edged sword.However, it shows that reason can win.Because the changeover of Google's own components to Apple's equivalent saves Google money, but at the same time brings the competition, knowledge and maybe even code to improve something that Apple has not wanted to improve so far.Or did not know about the Apple that it would have to be improved.
But the decision is reasonable on the functional page.Just because something was good or even necessary ten years ago does not mean that it is still good or necessary today.If Apple can deliver components that take on the same function as Google's own, it makes sense to let the own developments die in dignity.
Google also succeeds in a large throw with the changeover.The services that the search engine giant's apps deliver are loved to all users.But the criticism that the apps on iPhones do not feel as good as they do under Android or how Apple apps feel under iOS.And very likely with the changeover.
The search engine giant saves money, time and is popular with users.A direct hit.
Koeyen's team had to prove courage.Because admitting that the work of ten years is no longer needed is not a little thing.On the one hand, positions in the team could be lost, and on the other hand, coeyen and the like prove.that the “Sunk Cost Fallacy” can be overcome.Or even has to be overcome.Just because money and time has been invested so far does not mean that another investment is worthwhile.
For users, a switch in the app may change.In the house construction metaphor that would be an insulation material in the wall.For Google and Apple, however, the world has just changed a bit.
